"Everything reported is strictly legal, just as Hitler’s extermination of the Jews was legal" [View all]

[HiPointDem]

Last edited Mon Feb 18, 2013, 05:06 PM - Edit history (1)

“In what follows it should always be remembered that there is no question of illegality involved. Everything reported is strictly legal, just as Hitler’s extermination of the Jews was legal – a little point I mention merely to suggest how much weight one may attach to the notion.”

– Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich and the Super-rich


It was not an earth-shaking decision made this past December by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, if one goes by the breadth of media coverage.... But it was certainly a judicial moment to take note of...the second worst judicial decision of the still-young century, a nose behind the notorious Citizens United ruling, which begot this horror.

U.S. v. Caronia involves Big Pharma, shedding a gloomier darkness on that already stygian world. Plaintiff Alfred Caronia is or was a sales rep for the wonderfully named Orphan Medical, which makes a drug named Xyrem. Xyrem has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a restricted use: namely, to treat narcoleptic patients suffering from cataplexy, once known as hysterical paralysis. The laws currently state that doctors are free to prescribe drugs for “off-label” – i.e., unproven – applications. However, drug manufacturers cannot promote off-label uses. Their marketing statements are limited to the range of uses approved by the FDA, based on the results of clinical testing. These have long been the rules of the game.

But minor matters of science, legality and ethics couldn’t stop a go-getter like Mr. Caronia. In his spiel to prescribers, he would make a series of wishfully inflated claims for Xyrem, claiming it could be of use for everything from Parkinson’s syndrome to fibromyalgia to “restless leg syndrome.” He also informed doctors that the drug was safe for patients under the age of 16, although a black box warning printed on the label bluntly states that it has not been tested for safety and efficacy on children. There was good reason to be cautious in this regard, as Xyrem is essentially a gussied-up form of GHB, the date-rape drug...

Some of Mr. Caronia’s mendacious sales pitches to doctors were caught on tape. Unruffled ...the wayward rep went on the offensive, charging that the regulations requiring strict honesty in his presentations to physicians were a violation of his sacred First Amendment rights...

To my mind, and I hope to others’, the correct judicial response to this plea would have been a rude chortle and a summary dismissal. But we live in earnest times, when a corporation’s right to pry the last nickel from a prostrate and overdosed public is considered by many... to be the very keystone of the edifice of freedom. And so the three-judge panel sided with the plaintiff, declaring that “the government clearly prosecuted Caronia for his words – for his speech...”


http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/15/strictly-legal/


What a fucking travesty. What a shit system.

Edited to add that the Scaife-funded Washington Legal Foundation 'handled the First Amendment issues". So the posters talking that up here -- that's whose POV you're promoting.

Caronia was represented on appeal by his court-appointed lawyer, Jennifer
McCann of the Long Island, New York-based law firm Thomas F. Liotti, LLC. The
Washington Legal Foundation, however, handled briefing and oral argument on all First
Amendment issues. WLF filed its briefs with the pro bono assistance of Michael A.
Carvin and Eric E. Murphy, attorneys with the Jones Day law firm. Murphy presented
WLF’s oral arguments on First Amendment issues.

http://www.wlf.org/upload/litigation/litigationupdate/012813RS.pdf